


Not Tonight

by noifsandsorbees



Category: The X-Files
Genre: Angst, F/M, revival
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-24
Updated: 2015-10-24
Packaged: 2018-04-27 21:59:05
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,091
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5065945
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/noifsandsorbees/pseuds/noifsandsorbees
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Mulder tries to picture her at an altar, a long white gown and a veil trailing down her back. It’s beautiful, he thinks, but it’s not Scully. Scully is mornings in bed with coffee and toast, late night runs, all night stakeouts and exhaustion and idealism in a white coat.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Not Tonight

_**Hers** _

She’s cross-legged on the floor outside of the guest room closet, old journals splayed around her, thumbed through and voraciously reread as if they could make youth reappear.

There’s pages upon pages of her declaring her love for Marcus in his rented tux and of John doodling on her lab reports as she did all their work and of Jake stealing her first kiss against her tenth grade locker and Mr. Burke… _yes, Mr. Burke,_ in his button ups with the sleeves pushed to his elbows, his wire-rimmed glasses and low voice, handing back her essays with a smile and a _great job, Dana_ that never failed to make her melt. Scully thinks she may still be in love with him, even now, and realizes she never stood a chance against Daniel or even Jack, and especially — as if on queue Mulder interrupts her thoughts with a yelp that she knows means he hit his head on the ceiling going up the stairs, again.

“I can see why Bill wouldn’t help us today. I’ve nearly concussed myself three times,” he groans, rubbing his head as he enters the room.

“Why do you think we always went to California?”

“The sun? The ocean? In-N-Out?”

“Those too.”

Mulder presses a cup of cinnamon-spiked hot chocolate that tastes like childhood into her hands and takes a seat a few inches from her as she sips.

“Thank you,” she says, quiet and too formal for either of their tastes and she’s not sure if she means _thank you for the drink_ or _thank you for being here with me and Mom and Marcus and Jake and John and Mr. Burke and everyone else who no longer is._

“I just finished the kitchen. I put aside those pots and mugs you love, but the rest is in the donate pile.”

Scully nods and places her cup down to close the notebooks around her. She starts packing them back into a box and he hesitatingly peeks in before pulling out a stack of CDs.

“The Clash, Scully? Sex Pistols, Bowie? How have I known you this long yet I’m still learning these things about you?”

She smiles weakly, trying, but her heart is too heavy with loss today. “I’m full of surprises.”

Scully picks up the last open diary and sees a promise to her future self that makes her heart ache completely. She tries to remember what it felt like to be seventeen and imagine a future with a medical degree, a gold band around her finger, a child on her hip and another at her feet. Instead sometimes when she’s falling asleep, always alone, she can swear she feels fifteen pounds of her and Mulder on her chest, warm and wiggling and curling his fingers into her shoulder. 

“Marry me, Mulder and let’s get away from all this” she says suddenly, _away from this empty home and these uncomfortable strangers pretending to be us._

Scully knows it sounds absurd and childish and that they’ve already tried running away together and it just wasn’t enough, but she’s remembering teenage dreams and what it feels like to be so newly in love that you think just being together is enough to make all other pain go away; after all, him and her forever is all she wants.

_**His** _

Mulder tries to picture her at an altar, a long white gown and a veil trailing down her back. _It’s beautiful,_ he thinks, _but it’s not Scully._ Scully is mornings in bed with coffee and toast, late night runs, all night stakeouts and exhaustion and idealism in a white coat.

Instead, Mulder pictures her in a hospital bed with only the smallest yet strongest bits of life left in her, each blink of her eyes possibly the end of his world. He feels his arms around her, fingers fighting over the grip of a baseball bat and sees her just-kissed face inches from his own at the break of the millennium; it still makes his stomach turn to butterflies. He remembers her large and waddling, their life beating inside of her, until suddenly it wasn’t. 

He sees her standing at their bedroom door, a full car waiting in the driveway, tears down her cheeks and ten years of baggage they refuse to discuss, almost all in the form of a little boy, nearly tangible on the floor between them.

_(“Come back to bed,” he pleads. “Don’t do this.”_

_“I’m sorry, Mulder. I have to.” And she’s gone.)_

Scully’s looking at him, lost and alone. He remembers desperately clinging to her in his apartment, trying to understand his mother’s suicide. He’d pulled her onto the couch and kissed her for all they were worth, as if it were the only way to not lose her too. She had kissed him back but pushed his hands away when he reached for her zipper. _Not tonight, Mulder. Not like this._

But on this night Mulder gathers her hands into his own and kisses each knuckle, one by one, until her chin quivers and one tear falls. He kisses each fingertip, her palms, her wrists, until she’s falling into his chest and he can pull her against him.

“Not tonight,” he whispers as her tears soak his shirt, “not like this.”

He watches as she composes herself, like all she wants is to do is take her moment of youthful idealism back and run away from him. Mulder brings her back to him and kisses her forehead for a minute too long for her to ever say it was like old times.

“I’m going to finish in here. Do you want to start Mom’s room?”

“Okay,” he nods, and makes his way out of the room, ducking under the doorframe. Maggie’s room is untouched, with an unmade bed and lingering perfume. He nearly trips on a pair of shoes she’d left in the middle of the floor, and his heart aches for the only real family either of them had left. 

On her dresser Mulder finds a small plate with what he assumes was her favorite jewelry. She was buried in a gold cross and a wedding ring that had been resized twice to fit her shrinking frame in the time Mulder had known her, but there’s a smaller cross on the plate, tiny pearl earrings and a golden band set with three emeralds. He holds the ring in his palm for just a few seconds, curls his fingers around it like a promise and tucks it in his pocket.

_Not tonight._


End file.
